Venezuela: Rosales would get 72% of votes says poll

By Aleksander Boyd

London 07.09.06 | Nelson Bocaranda reported in El Universal today that a poll commissioned by Chavez's campaign team "Comando Miranda" conducted in 7 regions of Venezuela, indicated that should elections be held next Sunday Manuel Rosales would get 72.1% of the vote, and Hugo Chavez would get 17.4%. Allegedly Chavez's strongest support comes from social stratum D with 20.2% -strata is traditionally classified in Venezuela as A, B, C, D, E being E the lowest income bracket- and from age group 47 and older, where the caudillo has 19% support. The principle reason for withdrawing support to those participating in the poll is that Chavez can not promise anything that he has not done so already and has failed to accomplish during his nearly 8 year-long tenure.

These results reinforce earlier trends announced by Alfredo Keller that suggested that Rosales had 29% vote intention, above Chavez's 27%.

On other electoral issues a clearly worried Hugo Chavez asked his supporters in Maracaibo, Rosales' stronghold where chavista governorship candidates have not won an election since 2000, to call for a recall referendum to remove him from office.

Chavez keeps repeating that Venezuela does not harbor terrorist groups. However evidence shows that Chavez has knowingly ignored calls to arrest the penetration of identified terrorist groups in Venezuela. And quite obviously he has forgotten his notoriously pro-terrorism reaction in late 2004, when he decided to halt diplomatic and commercial relations with Colombia over the capture in the streets of Caracas of FARC's narcoterrorist Rodrigo Granda. Granda, a protegé of the Chavez regime who had been living in Venezuela, was later found to have masterminded the kidnap and murder of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former Paraguayan President Raúl Cubas.